Pentecost VII, Proper 10
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Colossians 1:1-14
Luke 10:25-37
+ In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
LAST MONDAY or Tuesday morning — whichever was the hottest, most humid day we've had this year — a young woman got off the Metrobus a few blocks from here. As she walked the half block to her office, she noticed an older woman — homeless and somewhat deranged — struggling with a huge suitcase. The young woman asked her if she could help her with the suitcase and where she was headed. "To the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church." My guess is that the older woman was headed for their day care center for disabled seniors run by the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, which we help to support.
The young woman picked up the suitcase and started walking with her. When they got to the church, the older woman said, "This isn't the right church." The young woman said, "Let's find it," and continued towalk along, lugging the suitcase. The two of them walked around the block and would up right back in front of the church. The older woman said, "This is it." The young woman said, "Well, I'm happy we found it," and she went on to work.
Her kindness makes me feel good. It also makes me feel a bit ashamed; it convicts me. Had I been in her shoes, I'd almost certainly have continued on my way, rushing to get to my comfortable, air-conditioned office. I may not even have noticed the woman.
The young woman does have something of the spirit of the Good Samaritan, but her kindness is not of the same magnitude. The Good Samaritan is truly an unusual and generous character, a social outcast risking his own safety and spending several days' wages on a stranger. He gives so fully of himself.
In his last sermon, the night before he was murdered, Martin Luther King preached about the Good Samaritan. He said,
The Jericho road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road, I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as a setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about [2200] feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about [1200] feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the Bloody Pass.
And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking. And he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt, in order to ... lure them [over] there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" But then the Good Samaritan came by. And he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"1
King points to the mark of a good life — not living for ourselves, but living for others, not asking "What will happen to me?" but "What will happen to the other person?" The Good Samaritan is how I'd like to be, what I hope I'm growing to be, what God is slowly making of me. That's the good news. But right now, I more fully know the reality of the other characters in the story. I identify with them.
To some extent, each of us is the injured man, lying in the ditch, left for dead, buzzards' fodder. We're in desperate need of help; our lives are messy; our character is lacking; we're full of regrets and disappointments and failures. Like most of us, I come to mass because it's a place where I experience God's grace and healing. It reminds me that I don't need to pretend to perfection. The parish is like the inn where we receive care and are nurtured to a fuller, healthier life. The Good Samaritan is Jesus in the sacraments and Jesus in each of us.
Regrettably, I also identify with the priest and the Levite. Jews and Samaritans were half-brothers, but they were bitterly estranged. Samaritans were from northern Israel. In the late 8th century before Christ, the Assyrians invaded and conquered the north. The Assyrian and Jewish populations began to intermarry, and the mixed descendants became the Samaritans. Jews who didn't intermarry were contemptuous of the impure half-breeds.
In the sixth century before Christ, the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem and razed the Temple. When the Babylonians went the way of all worldly empires, the Jews rebuilt their Temple, but the Samaritans opposed rebuilding the Jerusalem Temple. Eventually, the Samaritans built their own temple on Mount Gerizim in the north. Jews considered them unclean idolaters and treated them as social outcasts.
When people with a common religious heritage divide, it usually provokes the greatest bitterness and animosity. We can see that in religious controversies today, Christians ostracizing those who were their brothers and sisters.
One of the central points of the parable is that Jesus wants us to consider everyone a neighbor, even our enemies. Again and again, Jesus tears down boundaries between friend and foe, saying we don't have to see it that way, urging us to rise above our differences. He shocks people by insisting that God loves and cherishes every person B without prejudice, without partiality, without preference.
The priest and the Levite — a Levite's sort of a temple official, a temple acolyte — are traveling on the road, presumably up to Jerusalem to worship and to offer sacrifices, and they see a bloodied man lying by the road. If they had contact with a corpse, they'd become ritually unclean, unable to perform their liturgical responsibilities. So they are being conscientious to avoid the dead or dying man on religious principle, but Jesus takes issue with how they express their fidelity to God. Jesus says that ritual, liturgy, worship is not more important than loving and caring for someone, even an enemy.
Indeed, the point of worship is to strengthen us to care for one another. The mass conveys grace so that we can love one another. Our care for others authenticates our worship. Loving God doesn't ever interfere with loving neighbor. We love God by loving our neighbor. If we treat someone badly or neglect someone for the sake of worship, something's wrong!
The priest and the Levite got so carried away with attending to their rules of 'proper' worship that they were damaging their relationship with God and with other people. They were using religion to hide from God. Their religious observance was closing their hearts, hardening their hearts, cutting them off from people; their devout religious observance was allowing them to hide from God, to shield themselves from transformation and growth — the exact opposite of what religion is supposed to do.
Religion can get in the way of our relationship with God. It happens all of the time. One of the best ways to know if our relationship with God is healthy and vital is if we consider how we're growing, how he's transforming us. We can expect and can be confident that the Holy Spirit is at work in us B both individually and corporately. We can say with gratitude, "I'm a different person than I used to be." God is nursing us to fuller life.
Jesus wants us to recognize that religion can be corrupt and can get in the way of becoming more godly. What kind of religion is corrupt? Reflecting on Jesus' ministry, Garry Wills suggests corrupt religion is:
Any religion that is proud of its virtue, ... Any that is self-righteous, quick to judge and condemn, ready to impose burdens rather than share or lift them. Any that exalts its own officers, proud of its trappings, building expensive monuments to itself. Any that neglects the poor and cultivates the rich, any that scorns outcasts and flatters the rulers of this world. [Wills concludes] If that sounds like just about every form of religion we know, then we can see how far off from religion Jesus stood. 2
Religion, religious institutions, churches frequently get it wrong, but we need not confuse religion with God. Real religion transforms our hearts and minds. It teaches that we love God by loving other people. It teaches that anything that prevents us from loving our neighbor is certainly not worship or reverence or love of God. The good news is that ultimately God asks from us what he's already given to us — love.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
© 2007 Lane John Davenport
